Interpol - Our Love To Admire - Capitol

For their third album - and their first for a major label - Interpol certainly stretches out musically. Known and beloved for their various, somewhat gloomy Joy Division-esque atmospherics, the New York-based band made an effort to change things around this time, and they have achieved that.

While the new album's no walk in the park (check out the graphics on their MySpace page for proof of this), Our Love To Admire's use of keyboards and textures does tend to lighten things up a bit. The album's first single - "The Heinerich Maneuver" - is very upbeat and actually poppy in places. Elsewhere, there's plenty of the old moodiness left, like on the tracks "No I In Threesome" and "Rest My Chemistry." One of the album's most striking tracks - "Mammoth" - chugs along like Forever Now-era Psychedelic Furs.

While Our Love To Admire has been taking a bit of a beating in some indie rock critic circles, I suspect that they main reason for that is because they wanted the band to stay in the Antics world stylistically. Interpol is attempting to evolve, and they've done a pretty fair job of it so far.